


Can You Hear me, When I cry Myself to Sleep?

by alexaplaysgames



Category: Andromeda Six (Visual Novel)
Genre: A look into June's past, Angst, Gen, Human Experimentation, Past Fic, laboratory experimentation, mentions of human experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29367906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexaplaysgames/pseuds/alexaplaysgames
Summary: June and Jules, and a laboratory childhood.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Can You Hear me, When I cry Myself to Sleep?

**Author's Note:**

> I hit my drama bone when writing this one! An older fic, and one I;m not too happy with, but I thought I'd share :)

“June?”

The small, frail voice resonates through the endless dark.

“June?”

“Go to sleep, Julian. They don’t like it when we don’t sleep.”

“Why?” Jules asks, and June can imagine his face, wide-eyed curiosity on features exactly like his own.

So juvenile. So sickly pale. A puzzle, one that would be achingly beautiful if it weren’t missing too many pieces.

June doubts that his twin is truly unaware of the answer to his own question, but he’s learned that this is a way of dealing with the things he cannot comprehend. To ask questions as a way to evade answers. Keep turning and turning to avoid running headfirst into the truth.

“I don’t know,” comes June’s response, dismissive. He rolls onto his side, pulling his blanket over his head. “Stop talking. They’ll hear.”

Silence. June shivers under the single, wool blanket. The labs are always freezing. The cold air bites at his bandages, amplifying the ache that has settled in his bones.

“Do you think we’re going to die?”

The question makes ice of June’s abused veins, freezing solid the little blood that hasn’t been extracted, mixed, tested, or analyzed.

“I don’t know.”

Words that taste familiar on his tongue. This time it’s not a lie; he has no clue whether their parents plan to kill them here. But he suspects. He suspects, based on the whispers he overhears when they think he’s unconscious. He suspects, based on how Jules’ skin looks paler every day, peeling from his thin form like pastry crumbs. He suspects, and he hopes he’s wrong, that Jules is going to die.

He’s only nine years old, and he’s struck by the realization that he’s going to be all alone. June always thought he had nothing to lose. As it turns out, he was wrong.

Jules speaks again. “But mom and dad wouldn’t do that to us... right? They wouldn’t...”

Would they? If they did, would he feel hurt? Could he mourn a life he never had? Miss a family he’s never known? June often wonders if this is simply how life works. This is, and always has been, his one and only reality.

“ _June_. June, I’m scared,” Jules whispers, voice quivering like it does when his lower lip trembles.

 _Me too_ , he wants to say, _I’ve always been scared._

There are no white coats to silence him this time, no gloved hands to shove another pill down his throat and tell him to shut up.

Before June can open his mouth to reply, or tell him to be quiet again, the white coats are there, pumping tranquilizers into their veins.

 _I told you they would hear_ , he thinks feebly.

_Why do you never listen?_

The white coats used to scare him. They look like people, but their faces are empty. He used to call them puppets, and wondered who pulled their strings. But June rarely feels scared anymore. He just feels hollow.

He understands the white coats now.

June tries to ignore the way Jules screams and thrashes and takes it, silently, jaw clenched and eyelids growing heavy with the weight of the drug.

When he wakes, the white coats are there to take him again. He bites back a retort when they bind his wrists and call him Subject A-645 instead of Juniper.

He doesn’t want to outweigh his usefulness with disobedience, after all. It didn’t take him long to learn you only live as long as they need you. Bleeding and beaten is better than ending up a nameless corpse, mourned by no one and forgotten by everyone.

Besides, he doesn’t have a name, not really. _Juniper_ is just the product of a sad little boy trying to find happiness where there was none.

When it’s all over, when they’ve drained him dry of blood, sweat, and tears, he’s tossed back into the room like an empty can. Used and fragile and crushed.

His skin itches, scratched raw, and his stomach twists with the knowledge that each time, it leaves him feeling a little less weak. Each time, afterwards, for just a moment, his body thrums with _something_. He knows that he doesn’t like it, whatever it is. He hates what they’ve done to him. But it’s not like he’s ever had a choice.

And he knows that it’s not killing him like it’s killing Jules.

It’s making him _stronger_.

It’s terrifying, to consider the way it’s changing him, so June pushes the thoughts from his mind. The first thing he notices is that Jules is gone. The sheets on his bed have been hastily removed.

June’s mind swims with thoughts, explanations, questions, but mostly just frantic repetitions of _no, no, no, no_. Because he can’t think straight. Because he’s scared, because, because-

Because he’s still a child. Or he should be. Should have been. But he’s only ever been an experiment, as disposable as a plastic cup and as faceless as a mannequin.

“Where’s my brother?” he screams at the wall, the one he knows hides the white coats behind their one-way glass. Sitting with their coffee cups and their notes, perched on thrones sewn of bones and skin, he imagines. Unaffected by the misery and fear, pouring out from between cracks long sealed shut, that roll off of him in waves.

“Where’s my brother?” He repeats, softer, kneeling next to the bed, tears staining Jules’ mattress and mixing with the blood that soaked the fabric long ago.

That’s when he sees it. The bracelet, lying in the partial shadow of the bed frame on the cold, white stone floor.

Jules’ bracelet.

_“Now we are connected,” Jules had whispered, eyes wide and his expression prideful as he gazed upon the matching bands of leather._

“ _Whatever happens, we’ll never, ever be apart.”_

With trembling fingers, from rage or fear or sadness, he doesn’t know, June picks up the bracelet and ties it around his own wrist, pairing it with his own.

It is then that he decides it was rage, after all.

_One day. One day I’ll use what they’ve made me to make them pay for what they’ve done._

And through his tears his eyes glow a brilliant green.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @alexaplaysgames


End file.
